SINGAPORE – Apple’s new iPhone 15 was being resold online just hours after it officially went on sale in Singapore at 8am on Friday.
Checks by The Straits Times on Carousell showed about 74 listings of the phones by 10am, with prices ranging from $1,680 to $2,500.
For instance, an iPhone 15 Pro (256GB), which retails at $1,809, was being resold for $1,900 to $2,500. The phone features a titanium case and a faster chip that makes for better cameras and mobile gaming.
The retail prices of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus start at $1,299 and $1,449 respectively.
Snaking queues were seen at the Apple stores in Orchard Road and Marina Bay Sands, as well as at Courts Nojima at The Heeren on Friday morning, with some people even queueing a day before to snag the new gadgets.
Some had even come prepared with mineral water and food, while others had what seemed to be their luggage with them.
First to collect their new iPhones at the iStudio outlet in Paragon mall were Mr Zaman and Mr Zahid Haque, tech reviewers from Bangladesh. The pair, who had originally been queueing at the Apple flagship store in Orchard Road since 2pm on Thursday, got their hands on the gadgets at 8am on Friday, thanks to some quick thinking.
“We were walking for a bit at 2am and realised that there was no queue at iStudio,” said Mr Zaman, who then left to be the first in line at iStudio.
At Courts Nojima at The Heeren, Mr Frankie Nguyen bought two units of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. He had flown in from Vietnam on Thursday to buy the phones, with the intention of reselling them back home. “In Vietnam, only iPhone’s Pro Max models will sell really well,” he said.
He said he had also sent out his team of resellers to Thailand for the launch and hoped to go back to Vietnam with 20 iPhones.
Over at Singtel’s Comcentre in Exeter Road, engineer K.A. Ng’s 13-hour wait paid off when he was first in line to collect his iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The 42-year-old had started queueing at 6.30pm on Thursday. He was also the first in the queue in 2018, 2019 and 2022 at the Singtel flagship store for the iPhone releases during those years.
Singtel Singapore’s head of channel sales and operations Jensen Tan said the company had deployed 25 per cent more manpower to help with the launch on Friday morning.
Apple unveiled its iPhone 15 line-up in California earlier in September, which includes two entry-level models and two high-end models. All four models will shift to a USB-C charging port to comply with new European Union regulations.
The higher-end models feature a redesigned frame that uses titanium instead of stainless steel to make the phones lighter, and an A17 processor, which uses the more advanced 3-nanometre production method.
The top-of-the-range new iPhone, which sports a 6.7-inch screen, also has a new camera with deeper optical zoom.
- Additional reporting by Azmi Athni
